Autumn’s Menace

A plainclothes policeman, using a pair of handcuffs as brass knuckles, cut the face of a boy who was wandering the city in a hospital gown. The sirens got louder. Windows rattled and the pictures on the walls shook. Sometimes I think it isn’t true that teaching a child to not step on a caterpillar will make you a better person. Sometimes I think the plainclothesman is going to walk through the door, so I just keep waiting. The city streets are deserted – no St. Patrick’s Day parade, no people. In these slow days of unease, everyone is a biohazard.

Doe-Re-Me

I am writing

at the kitchen table,

or, rather,

struggling to,

when my wife

excitedly calls me

to the window

and points down

into the yard

where a doe

with a coat

just a shade

from golden

is browsing

on fallen leaves

that, if it wasn’t

for the hours

I spend trying

to make poems,

I would have

burned long ago.

CRUMBS

In the dark

I feel the crumbs in bed

And start to maniacally try to

Scratch

That one spot on my back

I cannot reach.

Every night

Before I turn out the light

I shake out the bottom sheet

Yet somehow there is always some

Infinitesimal pebble

That manages to get between

My shoulder blades

Seconds after my back

Hits the bed in those first moments

After lights out.

Then I finally calm down

And put my arms around the pillow that

I press close to my body

And put my fingers through my beard

As if petting a sleeping animal

Thinking now that

I finally have a job where

I can grow the beard and keep it

Without a problem

Just like she wanted

And she’s gone –

Leaving me to stroke

And scratch

Myself.

 

Ars poetica as a fry cook named Lars Moetica

Lars Moetica’s father before

He perished from prostate cancer

Always told his malleable son

Son, all you have is your name

Lars Moetica these days can 

Be found in late-night

Commercialized dungeons 

Where corn oil is emperor 

Lars Moetica accepted his

First paycheck as a fatherless

Child, invested in a chest tattoo

All you have is your name

It’s said Lars Moetica is 

On the path to promotion 

Only a scant year after his 

Mustache penciled in 

Lars Moetica is built to last

In the late-night dungeons

And he’ll forever remain

Rail-thin

Lars Moetica takes to his 

Name like a suicidal poet to

Conception pain—the words,

They never come out right 

Lars Moetica will still somehow 

Outlast his tag and still somehow

Float hemispheres & still somehow

Words nibble the relics of words.  

Dr. Richard Alpert (hippies mourn)

It’s a twinkle
light catching
eye
lost between
particle and sky
prism refraction
weaving gently
through
soft folds
in mind’s
satisfaction’s
discontent
that here
used to be now.

My Kevorkian Alter Ego

Please go ahead jump
Put me out of your misery
You don’t have the balls
You’re all talk no devastation
This charade is an overplayed drama.
A boring non event
The only thing that has died
Is my interest
Stop with the Greek Tragedy
Cutting your wrists
Swallowing pills
Attempted O.D.’s
Pathetic cries for help
But no one is listening.
It’s embarrassing to watch
These acts of a coward
A gun in your mouth
a hair trigger nice touch
An electric appliance
in the bathtub
Use a toaster
Makes a great headline
“He’s Toast!”
These are methods sure to end it.
Your slow boat to death
Has run out of rivers
The Heroin Cocaine Oxys the Meth
Condiments used to flavor your depression
So let’s get it over with
Time to make the grand exit.
What makes you think
Anyone gives a fuck
Go ahead and jump
Make a big splash
That’ll show ’em
You don’t give a fuck either.

The Drink

The boat skims out of the cut and bracing,
stops and bobs on the sea.
My brother and I tend the gunnel
like a pub, rods hung over, plopping sotted
yellows by the school. And Dad, with a big one on,
snaps: grab the gaff, Trey. And before me,
Trey snatches the staff off top shelf
and sinks it in the sea. After a slip or two,
Dad guides his quivering grip to hook and hoist
the mack, slapping on deck. The mackerel’s fins hack
the boat and sucks air. It wriggles in
a puddle of its own blood, and Dad, stiff, shakes off
the hook from the fish’s lip, rips the barb from its liver,
and tosses that tippler in a box with the sloshy anonymous.
After the ice box is filled, Dad shoots us straight through to Haulover.
Skimming back into the inlet, the boat braves little waves
as Dad, decked in yellow wet gear, aptly navigates
back to land. Quick hook and loop,
the boat floats, roped to the dock. My brother and I pile
off the ship and ride off; we watch Dad unravel
the rope and putter off, sucking booze like air.

Thames

The city washes up
on its own shore: smooth speckles
of a broken beer bottle
are cradled by the rocks,
while each day the harsh tooth
of its shards is renewed when
the sun briefly emerges.
This same shore, a child chases
a daisy blown in from the park above,
where his parents enumerate
at the edge of a sidewalk,
and the sand salts their shoes,
but that’s not poetry. The chain
that hangs from the docks
may look like a smile, and the rats
might playfully chase one another
beneath the train tracks, but none
of it like the tracks could twist
back to an old Polish man
who holds a pocket-watch
in his palm like an apple.

For the Summer’s End

Scars are the poetry of the skin,
and the hands of Thetis dance on the Styx.
The eggs of a chicken end when breakfast begins.

A couple of words are kicked out like cans of tin
and tassels of thyme unwind behind them.
Scars are the poetry of the skin.

You trip into a bathtub the same size as sin,
and the water brims over the cracked porcelain.
The eggs of a chicken end when breakfast begins.

The white knife and chaos of the water pin
the dagger of Demosthenes on fathers long dead.
Scars are the poetry of the skin.

The bow trembles but cleaves to the violin,
and a baitfish descends on its thicker wire’s end.
Scars are the poetry of the skin;
the eggs of a chicken end when breakfast begins.

Sensitive And Intelligent

I read in a magazine
the other day, where
someone said that
most drug addicts
were simply too
sensitive and too
intelligent to face the
world the way it is.
It’s the discrepancy
between how harsh
and cruel real life is,
and how beautiful they
know it could be that
causes these poor
souls to anaesthetise
themselves with heroin.
Yes ,it sounds good, and
it’s a great excuse, but of
course it’s total bullshit.
I’ve met quite a few
heroin addicts who were
incredibly sensitive, and
intelligent people.
The majority though were
as sensitive as a sledge
hammer, and about as
intelligent too.
Of course, it’s a nice thing
to read if you want to
fool yourself.
We are the best people
at doing that, if we weren’t
we wouldn’t have ended
up as addicts in the first
place.

cisco sits bleeding

felony face
cuts down the alley
like a breeze
police sirens
sing the same name
as last night
darkness covers
the bloody footprints
of a young desperado
as he takes refuge
inside the gentlemen’s john
defunct Exxon
new address
for the dispossessed
a spider-cracked mirror
hides out-of-luck eyes
hard as Roman nails
bony back to the wall
he slips to the floor
laughing at nothing at all
shaky tones
fall into a full-blown hack
bell-cracked saxophone
bouncing death-rattle tones
round and round
the obscene sanctuary
top floor of hell
that smells
like a waiting room
for the cemetery
a young life fades
& slips away—madly backward

repetition of a blue bass line

take me to a place
where midnight accumulates
don’t want to see the sun anymore
put me on a train
with no windows
where nighttime lasts forever
& a speed-mad engineer
with a mechanical heart
highballs a coal-black engine
through time tunnels
like a bullet leaving a gun
where the speed of darkness
is faster than the speed of light
dreaming up a nocturnal scene
Mingus & Monk softly
behind a tan-skinned lady
with a white flower in her hair
singing “keeps on raining”

just give me things
I can depend on
red wind, old times
the repetition
of a blue bass line

forgotten songs

rotting shack
watched over
by three ceramic angels
casting cold eyes
over a weed-covered
yard of wrecked cars
& a black cat parked
under a front-porch swing
that dangles
like a hanged man
from a single chain

a derelict mockingbird
rests on the rusting frame
of a 1964 mustang
& sings forgotten songs
stolen from
an unknown bluesman
who once slept here
small truths falling
in slow 6/8 time
12-bar compositions
concerning
Louisiana hurricanes
with hellish ladies’ names
& skies
that won’t stop crying

---

126 Days

I lost myself when I found you. Ripped holes in the map of who I used to be and replaced every page with the promise of you. If only promises didn’t burn like the vodka I use to forget the taste of you.

You, who once promised to spend your whole life proving to me love exists, decided that I was just a drop of water, not large enough to swim in, and not enough to make you stay.

My presence never enough to cover you with warmth, only avalanches follow in my footsteps. Maybe if I spend enough time practicing, I could learn how to conform myself into whatever shape of me you need. I’ll hide my rough edges and erase a few sides until I become someone more than a stranger.

You, the protagonist and antagonist of all these poems, have deflated me into someone I no longer recognize. It’s been 126 days since I’ve looked into a mirror, that’s how many days I’ve forgotten about myself. It’s hard to believe in beauty when I’ve blindfolded myself with longing and a desire to find you again. And I want to so badly believe that you are out there putting together the torn pieces of my map and trying to locate where we buried our love. But I know that is nothing more than a fairy tale I will never live, those endings don’t come to girls like me.

The Laughing Gull

Because I was watching the waves
roll in and not where I was walking,

I very nearly stepped with bare feet
on a decaying wing, all that drearily

remained of a so-called “laughing gull,”
dirty white flight feathers flaking off

a now-fatuous frame of hollow bones
that nature had designed for soaring.